Friday, February 27, 2015

Man I loved "Donnie" - the first mix above all ... Picked it up in early 1988 in NYC, amid a bunch of acid house and Detroit-but-didn't-know-that tunes, alongside things like "Your Only Friend" and "Acid Trax". And "Donnie" felt acieeed even though it's all about the hyper-distraught vocals

From 1988, = nuum ground zero?

Nah, not really...

But then again these guys seem to think so

The rinse-out version is quite fun but then the dubstep version is painfully ponderous

Two more from Ron Tom whomever he might be

_________info on Shout Out! exhibition

Shout Out! UK Pirate Radio in the 1980s is an archival exhibition that looks back at the early tower block pirate radio movement that emerged in the UK during the 1980s, prompting a new musical phenomenon that would change the face of British music as we know it.

Pirate radio is often associated with the off-shore broadcasting of the 1960's, but in the early 1980s it enjoyed a renaissance. This time stations were broadcasting music from the roofs of tower blocks rather than at sea, and in a further shift the movement distinctively celebrated black culture. Radio Invicta, London Weekend Radio (LWR), JFM (Jackie FM), Horizon, Dread Broadcasting Corporation (DBC) and Kiss FM, became the first UK pirate radio stations dedicated to soul, funk, jazz, reggae and hip hop. Although often overlooked, these stations were pioneers, championing music of black origin and paving the way for such burgeoning rave scenes as jungle, garage and house.

In Thatcher’s Britain these stations offered an escape for those suffering racial discrimination and economic marginalisation. They aimed to empower musical communities ignored or censored by the BBC and the licensed commercial stations.

With the advent of the Telecommunications Act 1984, many of these stations were forced to close down, prompting a new generation of ‘pirates’ to develop imaginative, alternative strategies to outwit the Radio Investigation Service. By the end of the 1980s an explosion of new pirate stations dominated the airwaves with over 600 stations nationwide, and 60 in the London area alone. The demise of pirate radio came about with the introduction of the Broadcasting Act 1990, but its legacy lives on.

This display tracks the history and cultural significance of 1980s pirate radio in the UK, its legacy and impact on contemporary music and broadcasting.

Friday, February 20, 2015

The QuietusinterviewMumdance and Logos on their new collaborative album Proto"Released on... Pinch's Tectonic label, the record is knowingly and intentionally indebted to the rave music of the pair's formative years, old happy hardcore, gabber and jungle tapes dating back to the early-to-mid 1990s. The influence of the early Warp signings that defined Sheffield's storied bleep techno sound - records such as Sweet Exorcist's 'Testone', Forgemasters' 'Track With No Name' and LFO's seminal 'LFO' - can also be picked out on tracks such as 'Move Your Body', 'Border Drone' and 'Dance Energy (89 Mix)' (the title of which recalls the BBC Two "youth" programme that curiously co-opted elements of rave culture just a short time after Thatcher's establishment had finished knocking several shades of shit out of those involved in the early explosion of illegal raves)."Isn't it about time people moved on to the dubstep revival or something? Retrorave and tru-nu junglizm, it's kinda been done. Double done. I mean, it's nearly seven years since Where Were U in '92?.... "Despite not experiencing that early rave and acid house period first hand, it's impossible not to be drawn in as the pair share anecdotes about first raves and recount their discovery of the gabber, hardcore and jungle that has fascinated them enough to build an entire studio around realising those influences." Mumdance: "So, we've spent quite a bit of time and money building up what is essentially a 90s rave studio and that's how we like to build tunes because it's a really important sound to us."Now that is some serious retro bizniz right there - that is Jack White level attention to detail and correct process. A studio purpose-built for doing it the authentic bygone-rave-way!"Proto, though, is not something rooted in the past, but a record that feels as forward-looking and futuristic as the genres that inspired it sounded on first discovery."Really? How could that be the case? Such an assertion requires a tad more elaboration, I feel.Mumdance: "There's this aesthetic that runs through it in the way that's it been mixed down and how we've produced it all. That's the one constant, so obviously it references a lot of sounds but the mix-downs and the hardware that we used on it all, because we wanted it to have the colour of old hardcore and jungle for the sole reason that that's what we grew up with".As a historical exercise, it's quite interesting I suppose as it pinpoints a point where a lot of things - Belgian and German hardbanging techno, early breakbeat, the Brooklyn proto-gabba, UK acid-shrieker tunes, the harder things out of Detroit (like early Plus 8) ,stuff that in a year or two would ultimately be trance etc - were all jumbled together and tended to be thought of simply as "techno".As Logos puts it: "I was really interested in the link as well between Belgian and US techno in the early days and people like Lenny Dee with his releases for labels like Nu Groove. That linked for me with hardcore, like Manix, 4hero, people like that. It's quite interesting because, at that time, techno, hardcore, rave were all quite mixed up and what later became that kind of polyrhythmic techno that Jeff Mills played and the industrial sound hadn't really emerged yet, but you could hear it coming through very early on."The title "Legion" seems like a nod to PCP and Dance Ecstasy 2001.But what about this concept of harking back yet still futuristic? How do you throwback and push forward simultaneously?Mumdance: "I think it was important for us to use old technology but make sure we were looking forward. But, when we talk about the future, it's not in a sense of 'we are the future', but more that the music we're referencing was obsessed with the future and we're big science fiction fans"So, not "we bring you the phuture, the phuture, the phuture" ,... but "we bring you the past's idea of the phuture, the phuture, the phuture" Strange days we living through...And to think there's people who don't understand why I wrote Retromania.... Postscript: downloaded the album from eMusic, as I knew I would... It's really well-done. As recreativity goes, very creative. But the point about its pointlessness stands. And can a record really be slammin' and elegaic at the same time? Serious question.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Righteous winners for the Ravescene Magazeen Awards, for the most part

although there's a LOT of competition for Best Hardcore Record in 1993 ("finest illusion", "open your mind (foul play rmx)", "mystic stepper", "renegade snares" the original mix, "the dark stranger", "scottie", "warpdrive"... on and on and ON!)

One of my great regrets: never making it to Innersense at the Lazerdrome.